


Save Me, I'm Lost

by Stuckyforthewin



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: BAMF Bucky Barnes, Bucky Barnes & Tony Stark Friendship, Bucky Barnes Needs a Hug, Bucky Barnes Recovering, Coffee Addiction, M/M, Memory Alteration, Memory Loss, Pining, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Revenge, Sarcasm, Slow Build
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-08-19
Updated: 2018-08-19
Packaged: 2019-06-29 21:13:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,834
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15737448
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Stuckyforthewin/pseuds/Stuckyforthewin
Summary: As Barnes finds himself out of options, an unlikely scenario arises in which Barnes breaks into billionaire Tony Stark's building and makes himself at home in Tony's apartment. Meanwhile, Steve desperately searches for his missing friend.





	Save Me, I'm Lost

 

The wind roars deafeningly in Barnes’ ears as he sprints around the block from the three bulking HYDRA agents that have been pursuing him for the past mile and a half. He’s managed to put a considerable amount of distance between himself and them, possibly enough to station himself in a small shop and allow them to pass him by without noticing, but Barnes knows they’ve already called for backup and will have agents swarming throughout the entire Midtown area –east and west– within a five minute span.

He needs to think fast.

Unfortunately, his mind disagrees.

Barnes hasn’t exactly been the most cunning since breaking free of HYDRA’s grip on his brain, evident through the fact that they were able to trace him throughout his entire journey from D.C. to Manhattan. It’s been little things, like forgetting to wipe fingerprints on the doorknobs to safehouses or not shielding his face correctly from the street cameras when on the move.

Nevertheless, they’ve followed him here, and now, as he needs the strategic part of his mind the most to shake HYDRA off his tail, it seems to be completely short-circuiting.

Fine.

He’s hitting the forties on Park now, meaning he’s nearly at Central Park. Meaning he’s nearly in the clear. Here on the streets he can blend in fairly well–unless he happens to be being chased down by three large, attention-drawing men–but in the park there are more than enough ways for him to disappear.

Barnes scans ahead, surveying his options. He can either keep straight until fifty-ninth and then head west or start cutting across to Fifth Avenue now. If he heads towards Park now, he’ll likely be cutting down the time it takes to get to the Park. But that could risk running into trouble headfirst on Fifth Ave, which would force him to take a detour and lose time.

Barnes is lost in thought enough that he fails to notice a women jogger headed straight towards him. They slam into each other and the woman falls on her ass, Barnes staggering forward.

“Oh God, I’m so sorry, I–I didn’t see you, are you okay?” Barnes gasps for breath, knowing the woman is likely not okay considering he’s a supersoldier and she’s human. He glances behind him–the three men are only a block away. He doesn’t have the time to help her, but he can’t just leave her if she’s seriously hurt.

However, she nimbly jumps to her feet and clasps his hand, her green eyes meeting his.

“No worries, thanks for checking. Enjoy your run,” The woman says before walking away, very aware of the look of confusion and weariness on Barnes’ face due to the note she’d slipped into his palm when she’d grabbed his hand. Barnes continues to run, as the HYDRA men are half a block away at this point, opening the crumpled paper:

 

**You’re in danger. Four men at 46th headed right to you. Two stationed 44th on Lexington and Madison Ave. Good Luck.**

 

Well. Even if this information were true, which Barnes has absolutely no reason to believe is, he’s now stuck. HYDRA has herded him right into their arms.

He doesn’t allow himself to think about the sheer panic rising up his throat at the thought of being recaptured.

Barnes slows his run enough to absorb his surroundings. He’s halfway through forty-second street and he can in fact see four large, identical black-clothed men striding down forty-fifth. He’ll collide with them right on forty-forth. He glances back again and the original men pursuing him are now over a block and a half away. Maybe, just _maybe_ far enough to not notice if Barnes were to slip away to the side.

Without second thought, Barnes swerves into the building to his right, shaking off the protesting security guards. As he passes through the door and more guards begin heading his way, Barnes breaks into a run straight for the elevator.

One guard manages to grab his right arm and without thinking Barnes slams his metal fist into his jaw, sending him crashing to the floor. Oops. He shoves another guard into two more coming to tackle him and dives into the closing elevator, accompanied by only one man. Barnes slams on the button to the highest floor repeatedly until the door closes and the elevator is moving, and sighs with huge relief as he sinks against the wall.

Barnes takes a few more gulps of air and then glances at the man in the elevator with him, whose eyes are wide and mouth is gaping open.

“Hello.”

 

~

 

As Tony Stark came home from an extremely mind-numbing shareholders meeting, he did not expect to find a large man with shoulder-length hair and a metal hand hurdling into his elevator.

“ _Jesus Christ_ –” Tony starts as the man jams his finger into the button for his floor again and again. Jams his metal finger into the elevator button.

Eyes and mouth wide open, Tony smoothly collects himself. “Hello,” he says calmly.

The man stares at him and says nothing. Tony glances down at the metal arm, which the man almost immediately hides behind his back.

“I know who you are,” Tony leans back against the wall of the elevator, a leg propped up. “Didn’t expect you to take this long working your way up to the city. Why are you here, specifically in my building, Tin Man?”

Tony knows vaguely from the news articles he’d been given a month and a half ago that the Winter Soldier is a highly trained, deadly assassin capable of killing him in less than a second. But he also knows that if the Winter Soldier wanted him dead, he’d have been dead the second the elevator door closed.

The Winter Soldier takes a moment to respond.

“HYDRA has been down my throat since D.C.. I was running down Park Ave and I was running into a trap. I was out of options and went into this– _your_ building to avoid getting captured.” The man has a husky, or perhaps just raspy voice. Tony wonders when the last time the man drank water was.

Before he can respond, the elevator door opens to his floor. Neither of them move.

“Will you help me.” The Winter Soldier whispers. The fact that he’s _asking_ for help throws Tony off. The guy has him by the balls; they’re stuck in an elevator together and there’s no way Tony could outfight him, and the soldier knows that. Yet he’s giving Tony a choice in whether or not to become apart of this.

“Get in,” is all Tony says as he motions his hand towards the elevator door. The man brushes past him, quickly walking into the room. Tony follows and heads immediately for the liquor cabinet.

“So what’s the rest of your plan, Winter Soldier?” He asks as he pours himself a generous glass of scotch.

Silence. Just as Tony is about to try again, Barnes says quietly but unwaveringly, “I’m gonna make HYDRA pay for what they’ve done. I’m gonna take each and every agent down until the dues have been paid for every soul HYDRA has ever harmed. And I don’t care what moral boundaries I have to shatter to do so.”

“Well,” Tony starts after a long pause, “in the meantime you’re just gonna have an extended, pointless sleepover in my penthouse, then?” The man turns his head and stares at him, no answer.

“I was kidding.”

Again, the Winter Soldier says nothing. He instead sets the small navy backpack he’d been carrying on Tony’s couch and begins sifting through it for something.

“What do I call you?” Tony already knows his name, James Buchanan Barnes, but he’d at least give the guy the courtesy of introducing himself.

The man glances up. “Barnes.”

“Alright, Barnes. I’m Tony. And unfortunately, you can’t just crash at my apartment for however long you’re thinking. I’ve got a life to live and I’ve also got a habit of _not_ letting highly-wanted assassins live permanently within my dwellings.”

Barnes goes still, then stands up straight and stares hard into Tony’s eyes.

“Why not.”

Tony has a feeling that that wasn’t a question. He gulps. “Right. Well, there’s a guest bedroom at the end of that hallway to your right, you can put your… backpack there.”

Barnes says nothing as he picks up his bag from the couch. He continues to stare at Tony, as if reading him–

“Thanks,” Barnes says as he begins walking down the hallway. Just as he walks out of sight and Tony scrambles for the phone in his back pocket, Barnes says loudly, “Don’t even think of calling anyone, by the way.”

Tony just snorts as he holds the two broken halves of his previously working phone in his hand.

 

~

 

Barnes slams the door shut and immediately staggers to the floor, grabbing the edge of the bed frame to hold himself up. The adrenaline that’s been keeping him running is completely shot, exhaustion and panic settling in its place. Then, to make matters worse, the obnoxious billionaire waltzes into the room. He doesn’t have time for this.

Tony opens his mouth, then closes it. Barnes stares.

“I need you to tell me everything that’s happened since you left D.C. if you want me to trust you, help you and let you stay here. Everything.” He says. And since Barnes doesn’t have too many options–either tell him or get kicked onto the streets swarming with HYDRA agents and the police–he tells him.

The first thing Barnes remembers is jumping. He had been on a mission, and whenever he was on a mission there was nothing else except the mission.

But then there was.

There was a man falling into the Potomac River and that man, with his swollen, broken face, the way he was falling seemed to unhinge something vital in Barnes’ programming. He remembered falling like that once.

He’d known his handlers would punish him for disobeying their orders to kill the man.Though he couldn’t remember anything from his past, he _felt_ impressions of the tortures deep in his bones, and wasn’t too keen on experiencing anything like that again. But in that moment he hadn’t cared. For the first time, he didn’t give a damn about the consequences to his actions because he knew this time he wouldn’t come back to deal with them.

Once he’d dragged the man out of the river and he started to breathe again, Barnes started to run. Half of the reason he’d kept running was because he’d known he needed to ditch the scene. The other half was because it was a physical distraction from the void that was left in him, the void that used to give him order and control. Though Barnes had liked this freedom, without the mission he was lost. Raw. He’d felt his sanity start to crack from the heavy burden of responsibility that was unleashed upon his unsturdy shoulders.

So he’d given himself a new mission: take HYDRA down. Barnes’ mind had stabilized at the new objective.

He hadn’t known where he was running to. Barnes had dared to peer inside his mind to fish out some memory, something to give him direction. But he’d seen nothing but a whirlwind of images, frames of his past that were beyond recognition. They’d disoriented him enough to force him to stop running and vomit the nothingness that was in his stomach. He hadn’t looked in there again.

He didn’t stop running until he hit Bowie Maryland, around seventeen miles northeast of D.C.. Barnes had a faint remembrance of a HYDRA safehouse being there.  
He’d walked swiftly around the suburban neighborhoods, trying to gauge a sense of which streets and houses felt familiar. Within ten minutes he’d found the house and kicked the door open, dust floating in the air from where it had previously resided on the door.

Barnes had worked fast. He’d stripped his HYDRA uniform off and changed into a black hooded sweatshirt and dark gray sweatpants, stuffed a duffle bag and a backpack with various weapons, snacks he doubted he’d be able to stomach and an extra pair of clothes. Right when Barnes was about to leave, he’d noticed a laptop placed subtly on a chair in the living room with a flash drive connected to it. He’d known he didn’t have much time, but he opened the computer.

On the computer, more specifically on the flash drive, there’d been dozens of encoded files. Barnes knew he couldn’t crack them there so he’d shoved the computer into the duffle bag and continued–or had at least tried to. Barnes still doesn't exactly understand what had happened, but as he'd strode for the door, he began feeling weak, feverish. Feelings very foreign to the soldier within him. Before he could self-assess his condition, Barnes had passed out on the floor mere feet away from the door.

When he woke up, staggered out of the house and asked a civilian for the time and date, it had turned out Barnes was out for forty-five days. Days. He'd thanked the man and began to run down one of the main roads in the town, and had come across a truck with a New York license plate. Considering the direction it was headed (Northeast), he’d taken a hunch it was headed for the city and increased his pace until he was in line with the truck. In a single moment Barnes leapt, twisted and grabbed onto the truck with his metal arm. After regaining balance he’d climbed to the top and hitched a ride all the way to Brooklyn.

From there, he’d crossed the bridge to downtown Manhattan and tucked himself away in an alleyway. Not even fifteen minutes later, two HYDRA goons had cornered him there. He’d taken care of them, of course, but Barnes had known he had to be more conspicuous. He’d ditched the duffle behind a dumpster and stuck with the small, navy backpack, continuing uptown until he’d reached forty-fourth and Park Ave. Until he’d basically broken into some billionaire’s apartment and taken refuge there.

“Forty-five days, _Jesus_ –”

“And now I’m sitting on your hardwood floor trying to remember how to breathe, realizing I’ve just left my one God-damned chance of crushing the remnants of HYDRA behind a _fucking dumpster_.” It takes Barnes a minute to realize he’s shaking. He closes his eyes for a second and takes a wavering breath before looking at Tony.

“I need to go.”

“Nope, you’re not going anywhere, pal.”

Barnes stares. “I wasn’t asking for permission,” he mutters before finally getting his ass off the ground and stepping past him.

Tony, however, puts his arm out in front of Barnes and grabs his shoulder when he continues to try walking past him. Barnes stiffens and glares at Tony over his shoulder.

“Look, Barnes. You’ve got not only the _entire_ New York police force scouring the city looking for you, who will imprison you or at least put you in an insane asylum, but based on what you’re telling me there’s still a good amount of HYDRA alive after the little stunt in D.C., and I’m betting that their plans for you are much worse than prison.” Tony runs a hand through his hair. “Look, I’ll get someone to pick up your bag. But you asked if I can help you earlier, and trust me when I say I’m helping you by making sure you stay here for now.”

Barnes doesn’t break his glare as he fully turns towards Tony. “Fine. I’ll stay. But I better have that damn suitcase within the next twenty-four hours or I’m getting it myself, and I don’t care how many HYDRA agents and police officers I need to plow through to get to it.”

As Barnes turns back to his room, Tony lets out a low whistle and says, “looks like somebody’s gotta work on their manners, Metal Man.”

Barnes nearly cracks a smile. “Do I?” He asks, flexing his left arm and making the plates whir and shift.

“Touché,” Tony lets out a laugh and walks away, shaking his head.

Maybe living with the snarky billionaire for the time being wouldn’t be too bad.

 

 

~

 

 

Steve Rogers is a mess. At least, that’s what Sam Wilson has been referring him to as for the past month and a half.

Ever since… ever since Bucky had left him on the riverbank, he hasn’t been the same. Instead of his usual organized, energetic self, Steve can barely find it within himself to get up in the morning. He’s let his room in Sam’s house get slowly cluttered up, files of anything that could do with Bucky scattered on desks, floors, or basically any surface he could find room to put them on.

“Steve?” Sam calls, cautiously poking his head past the door. Steve is lying on his bed motionless, cradling a pillow against his chest as he gazes out the window, silent.

“Steve,” Sam tries again, stepping into the room, “you gotta get up, man. You promised me you would come with me to the VA this afternoon.”

“Alright.” Steve murmurs, eyes still fixed out the window.

Sam sighs before exiting the room. A small part of Steve feels guilty for shutting him out, but he can’t help it. At first he had been motivated, completely sure that he would find Bucky an hour or two later, and that he would be okay. That everything would be okay. He’d assumed he ran because he was confused, and just needed to be found. Maybe he would even remember bits of their past, move in with him, and resume their lives together after an unnecessary seventy year break. But as those days had turned into weeks, and those weeks had turned into months, Steve couldn’t help but feel a little discouraged. His mind had started jumping to conclusions. _What if Bucky ran away because he didn’t want to be found? What if HYDRA caught him and is now torturing him this very second? What if Bucky is dead, and it’s my fault for not being enough to help him break free, for not doing enough to help save him?_ So he’d stopped trying every minute of every day to search for Bucky. Now he can barely even look at the files dispersed around the room. He desperately wants to keep trying, to keep searching for him, but he just can’t deal with the disappointment of ending each and every day failing to bring home his best friend.  
Steve sighs as he hauls himself out of his bed and tugs on a clean pair of sweatpants and a t-shirt before heading downstairs.

“You want something to eat?” Sam asks while pouring himself a bowl of cereal as Steve comes around the corner.

“I’m okay, thanks.” Steve mutters, slipping on some sneakers.

“Steve, you haven’t eaten anything in three days. That’s probably equivalent to like a week for a normal guy. Here, have this.” Sam sticks the bowl of cereal he’d just poured next to Steve’s face, who jerks away.

“Sam, I told you, I’m fine.”

“Eat it.”

“Sam-”

“Eat. It.”

Steve sighs as he takes the cereal and begins scooping obnoxiously small amounts of cereal into his mouth. Sam doesn’t look away until Steve swallows. Honestly, it’s like he’s a fucking teenager.

“You happy now?”

“Any leads on Bucky?”

Steve raises his eyebrows. Sam never calls him Bucky. For some reason Sam really holds a grudge against his friend, usually referring to him as either _Barnes_ or _the soldier_ or _your old best friend_. He must really trying to get Steve to open up and stop being miserable. Steve has other ideas.

“Nope, but to be fair I haven’t exactly been looking.”

“Why the hell not?? This is the man who you almost let kill you because you couldn’t bear fighting him. The man you obsessed about finding for weeks after he went MIA. The one person who you have a connection with that isn’t dead or an amnesiac,” Steve winces, fists clenched. “Look, I’m sorry, but why all of a sudden are you giving up on this guy? You obviously care about him.”

Steve feels his anger boiling over but he doesn’t try too hard to control it. “ _Because, Sam, I’ve been looking for him for over a month, and we’ve found nothing. Not a goddamned thing. If he remembered me, he would’ve come back. If he doesn’t, then he probably went back to HYDRA, in which case we will never find him unless they send him to kill me again. But the thing is, if he does remember me and he’s not coming back because he doesn’t want to, then I should just stop trying so fucking hard. I should just leave him alone because he obviously doesn’t love me the way I love him, probably doesn’t even love me at all. And it just hurts_ so much _to even think that, so it’s better off if I don’t look for him anymore, because if I do, then I will find my answer and Sam, I don’t know if I could keep on living once I have it._ ” Steve had started off yelling, but at the end of his outburst he’s barely whispering, sitting on the ground leaning against the couch with his face pressing into his arms, shaking.

“Hey, hey, Steve it’s okay. You’re gonna be okay, Barnes will be okay… I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have brought it up.” Sam sits down next to him and pats him on the back.

“No, you’re right. I’ve been… I need to get myself together.” Steve whispers, shuffling so he was leaning his head on Sam’s shoulder.

“I just… let’s go to the VA,” Steve sniffs before rising to his feet, “I promised I would go, and maybe it’ll be helpful.”

“Yeah, okay. Just finish your cereal,” Sam laughs as Steve rolls his eyes, “yeah, don’t think I didn’t notice you subtly leaving it on the table and not going back to it.”

“I was having a mental breakdown, Sam.”

“No excuses.”

~

  
After the VA, Steve does feel a little better. He’d realized that a lot (not all, but a lot) of the emotions and guilt he’s feeling… other people feel too. And he’d also picked up and provided a few tips to help move past it, or at least live with it.

On his way back to the house with Sam, he feels himself tense up, which usually only happens when he feels someone following him. Only a few seconds later, he hears a familiar voice come from behind him.

“Hey, soldier.” He turns around to find Natasha leaning against a tree, a small smirk on her face. God, Steve hasn’t seen her in weeks, and she somehow manages to look simultaneously completely different and completely the same. Her hair, instead of being pin straight, now has waves like in the pictures he’d seen of her while she was working for Tony undercover. She’s wearing black leggings and a light green sweater, matching her eyes.

“I haven’t seen you in a while. I missed you.” Natasha says softly with a smile on her face when Steve doesn’t said anything. She steps towards him and embraces him in a hug, before whispering, “there are two men at your eight o’clock, armed. I saw them watching you as you left the VA, and when they followed you… I followed them.”

Steve opens his mouth to respond, but pauses. “How did you know where I would be?”

Natasha steps back, looking away. “I hadn’t seen you in weeks, Steve. I was afraid something happened to you, so I started looking around the area, at the places you would most likely be. And I found you.”

“Why didn’t you just stop by Sam’s house?”

“You know I’m not direct like that.” Natasha gives a small smile.

“Right.” Steve says, turning his head to eye the two men Natasha had warned him about. They had been staring at him but immediately look away as soon as Steve looks at them.

“So how’s your search for Barnes?” Natasha asks casually, as if she hadn’t just mention two agents that were a potential threat.

“It’s okay. Why?”

“Just wondering.”

“Oh.”

“I don’t know how you’ve been approaching things ever since SHIELD fell, but please try to stay low. They’re after you, you know. HYDRA.”

"How am I supposed to _stay low_ when I'm searching for Bucky? I’m trying to make myself as recognizable as possible for him."

"First of all, from what I've heard you haven't been doing much searching lately." Natasha says quietly.

Steve looks away, his voice in a much harder tone as he says "and if I wanted to change that?"

"Let me finish. Second of all, when you're out, at least try to conceal yourself. I bet Barnes will recognize you no matter how conspicuous you look. Wear baggy clothes, because anyone can put two and two together after seeing your body in your favorite tight t-shirts. Wear sunglasses and a hat too. And if you insist on going after him again, please bring a gun. Don't leave yourself defenseless. I don't know how I'd handle it if I found out you got yourself killed like that." Natasha says nonchalantly, but Steve knows there is a little bit of affection in her voice.

"Okay, I will." Steve responds vaguely. He isn’t listening to half of what she’s saying, and is instead looking for the two men Natasha warned him about. They could very possibly have an affiliation with HYDRA and might know something, anything about Bucky that he doesn’t know about yet.

"And Steve," Steve glances back and nods. "Barnes is dangerous. He's wanted for dozens of murders, and he nearly added you to the list of people he's killed. Are you sure you want to pull on that string?" Natasha asks, looking directly into his eyes.

Steve stiffens. "That wasn't him, and you know it. I'm trying to save him from the people who think of him like that, and now I'm starting to question whether that includes you."

"Steve, wait-" Natasha calls after him, but Steve is already walking away, and definitely aware of the two men starting to follow him. He starts walking a little faster, and with the movement feels a bulky presence in the pocket of his sweatpants. He subtly lowers his hand to feel what’s in his pocket, and snorts when he figures out what it is. Of course Natasha had snuck a gun in there. How he hadn’t noticed is a bit alarming.

When he catches up to Sam, he grabs his arm to keep him from walking any further and tells him to take the long route back home, while he would take an even longer one to dispose of the men. He knows Sam could take care of himself without Steve’s help, but he doesn’t want to risk one of them getting away to tell HYDRA where he is. He likes having his friends alive and not on the run from HYDRA.

He leads the men to an abandoned house on the outskirts of the neighborhood Sam lives in, and casually takes a step inside the house. It takes only two minutes for the men to follow, and another thirty seconds for the men to be tied up on the floor in front of Steve. He’d gotten a little rusty.

The men unfortunately were trained well by HYDRA, and keep their mouths shut during the impromptu interrogation Steve gives them. After a little over half an hour, Steve sighs and leaves the house, quickly sending a text to Nick Fury about the guys in the warehouse. He may not be Director of SHIELD anymore, but he can still take care of things.

“Glad to see you’re back on your feet Rogers.” Sam says when Steve arrives at the house.

He almost cracks a smile.

~

  
Natasha walks home swiftly after her encounter with Steve. It hadn’t gone as well as she’d hoped; Steve doesn’t know anything about the whereabouts of Barnes, and is now suspicious of her. Not to mention pissed off.

She has absolutely nowhere to start on the mission SHIELD had assigned her a couple days back, which is to find, contain, and bring back the Winter Soldier to undergo a private trial– where he would probably be put under permanent house arrest and be forced to go through therapy for 20+ years, if he was lucky.

Natasha knows deep down that he doesn’t deserve that, after all he’s gone through. But rationally, it’s a smart move. Barnes is an unstable person, and can wreak havoc if any HYDRA goon gets their hands on him. It’s for the best that Barnes be put somewhere he couldn’t hurt a fly and a fly couldn’t hurt him, either.

**Author's Note:**

> Reposting after realizing I had put up the first draft with a completely different beginning (and plot) (oops). Hopefully I'll be getting the next chapter up sometime in the immediate future. Hope y'all enjoy! There's plenty more to come, trust me ;)


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